Gordo and Friends

Gus Arriola and Gordo A Remembrance of Things Past

Earl Hubenthal, a former editorial cartoonist with The Los Angeles Herald Examiner, said of his friend Gus Arriola: "Gus is the consum-mate cartoonist's cartoonist. His comic strip, 'Gordo,' is a direct descendant of George Herriman's 'Krazy Kat,' whose whimsical denizens of Coconino County occupied the Arizona landscape so many years ago the same gentle, witty humor set in a wonderfully designed framework of pattern and color."

Gus Arriola created "Gordo" in 1941. He wrote and drew it for nearly 43 years before retiring it in 1985. The strip appeared in 270 newspapers worldwide and entertained uncountable loyal followers. With "Gordo," Arriola set the stage for cultural diversity years before it became the rage.

With six sons and two daughters already, Aquiles and Petra Arriola didn't need more children around their Florence, Arizona, home. But when Gustavo was born in July, 1917, he was welcomed with enthusiasm.

Gus fondly recalls his early days in Florence. "Spanish was the predominant language in our home. I didn't learn English until I was six. As a curious kid, while smarter people chose cooling siestas in Florence's 100° F. summers, I fried my brain chasing lizards, horned toads, ants, and other restless fauna. We left there when I was eight years old, but I still treasure images of it as a region that not too long before had been part of northern Mexico."

Gus' father had emigrated to Florence from Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico, in the late 1800s. In Florence he established the Cosmopolitan Store on Main Street, dealing in general merchandise. He married Petra Montano and in 1908 acquired Florence's first fired-brick house, built in 1886 by William R. Stone.

Gus remembers accounts of his grandfather, Espiritu Arriola: "Under contract to Wickenburg's Vulture Mine, Don Espiritu provided wagon trains to haul gold ore." Twice his wagons were attacked by hostile Indians on the treacherous 15-mile trip from the Vulture to the Hassayampa River where the ore was milled.

The first time, in September, 1869, four of his men were killed and 63 mules stolen. Then, in April, 1870, his wagons were again attacked. This time a herder was killed, another man wounded, and 74 mules were stolen. Arizona Territory had guaranteed cavalry protection, but none was evident in either of those skirmishes, and Don Espiritu had to absorb his losses.

The Arriola home on Main Street in Florence was razed in 1959 long after the family had moved to California and replaced with a tree-shaded parking lot. In 1986 a plaque was installed there commemorating the story of "Aquiles Arriola Square" and the house that once dominated the site.

In Los Angeles, young Gus discovered an interest in drawing. "At Manual Arts High," he said, "I took all the art courses possible."

After graduating he went to work at Screen Gems, the animation division of Columbia Pictures, drawing "Krazy Kat." One year later, he was hired as an assistant animator at the MGM Cartoon Department working for directors Rudy Ising, Hugh Harman, Bill Hanna, and Joe Barbera (of later Hanna-Barbera fame). Barbera, particularly, inspired Gus. "He had a bright mind," he says. "He drew well and was an outstanding gagman."

At MGM Arriola sharpened his writing and drawing skills. In 1940 he was requested to design a Mexican bandit for a not-to-be remembered film called Lonesome Stranger. "Something clicked in my cartooncrammed cranium," he says. "I 'shaved' thebandit's whiskers, pudged him up a bit, and voila! 'Gordo' was born." Arriola devel-oped the character into an easygoing, girl-crazy bean farmer in the small pueblo of San Juan Del Monte "somewhere in Old Mexico." Then, with a few sample strips

Under his arm, he made the rounds of New York's newspaper feature distributors. Luck accompanied him, and "Gordo" made its debut as a syndicated comic strip in Octo-ber, 1941, two months before Pearl Harbor.

Things went well for 11 months. His list of subscribing newspapers was growing impressively when, in comics' jargon, Pow!

Uncle Sam tapped Gus on the shoulder. He married his sweetheart, coworker Mary Frances Sevier, kissed her a hasty adios, and spent the next three and a half years producing animated training films for Hap Arnold's First Motion Picture Unit of the Army Air Force.

Out of the service in 1946, he resumed producing the daily and Sunday "Gordo"

strips. He observes: "Popeye had his spin-ach, Li'l Abner his po'k chops, Jiggs loved corned beef and cabbage, and Gordo was big on frijoles con queso, 'beans weeth cheese.' As a stunt, I had Gordo advise the readers to write [to the papers] for the recipe."

A limited number of recipes were printed. Ha! Editors called, saying they were delighted with thousands of requests. And they

April 1997

had no recipes. They were instructed to relay all recipe requests to the artist. "It It took months," grins Gus, "but we stuffed more than 15,000 envelopes with recipes and mailed them."

Traveling through Mexico, Gus and Mary Frances were impressed with that country's glib tour guides, who led them to specified shops and had an eye for the female tourists. "These guides flirted with my wife, taking pictures while my back was turned."

Upon returning home from one of those adventures, Gus, with a few deft strokes of His magic pen, converted Gordo from the fat, easygoing farmer into a similarly proportioned girl-chasing tour guide with a rickety yellow bus affectionately and appropriately labeled "El Cometa Halley."

From the strip's inception, Gordo's ro-mantic style was considerably cramped by the presence of his young ward and neph-ew, Pepito. It was a toss-up who was the role model for the other. To get him out of Gordo's hair, Gus introduced a cute 12-year-old freckle-faced girl from Texas to pursue Pepito. He accorded her his wife's maiden name, Mary Frances Sevier, and she became a regular cast member.

Gus' Gordo admired a well-turned calf but studiously shunned anything that smacked of matrimony. Bill Blackbeard, writing for

The World Encyclopedia of Comics in 1976,

(LEFT) Arriola ended Gordo's bachelorhood with something of a surprise. The marriage-shy Lothario tied the knot, but not with the lady readers expected.

Said of Gordo's lovestruck lady friend: "The Widow Gonzales is a very determined Woman, and she has to be. For better than 30 years now, she has schemed, stolen, defrauded, and all but murdered in order to obtain in marriage her conception of a small Mexican town's most eligible bachelor."

As the strip evolved, Gus invented a menagerie of creatures that were frequently featured in it. Thinking, talking critters like Bug Rogers, a nonconforming spider With an artistic bent, Poosey Gato, Senor Dog, Senor Pig, Popo the Rooster, Senor Owl, and two wiggly little worms named Porfirio and Panchito. Together with Gordo, they appear in a book collection of selected Sunday reprints: Gordo's Critters, published in 1989 by Celestial Arts, in Berkeley, California.

Gus, to amuse himself more than anything else, years ago started gagging up his Sunday page title blocks with zany names appropriate to the strip's particular theme; names like Jenner Russ, Alla Twitter, Witty Sizzems, and Percy Verance. They caught on. Readers liked them, and they became a tradition. "Often," Gus says, "I spent more

time generating those gems than I did

drawing."

In 1985 Gus put down his pen. He had drawn "Gordo" for more than four decades and was tired. In bringing the strip to an end, he felt an obligation to do it with a lighthearted bang. How else but to marry off his hero. Not to Widow Gonzalez as readers might have expected, but to his trusty housekeeper, Tehuana Mama. Gus got a vicarious kick out of that. So did his many devoted readers.

Author's Note: The reader may wonder how Gus Arriola and Gordo are faring in retirement. We checked. Gus advises us that "Gordo sways dreamily in his hammock in balmy Juchitan, Tehuantepec, stopping to smell the roses when Tehuana Mama brings them to him."

Of himself Gus writes, "Like Gordo, I continue to loll in my hammock, smelling the roses when someone brings them to me."

Jim Willoughby lives in Prescott. Ostensibly retired, he writes articles and draws cartoons for a few magazines and is writing and illustrating his seventh book, a guidebook to birds of the Southwest for Pelican Publishing.

Fremont, California-based Larry A. Brazil's specialty is capturing the essence of people at work, home, and play. His photos have appeared in numerous publications, including Sunset and U.S. News & World Report.